Creativity ruined my marriage. And saved my life.

Marriage is hard.

So hard I’ve failed at it twice.

Mostly because of my stellar taste in men, but that was before. Things have changed now. I’ve changed.

So here’s a little story time about my creativity and how it ruined my marriage, and saved my life.

I’ve always been the AuDHDer who needed to create. Drawing (badly), painting (kinda well), singing (really well), photography (amazing lol), diamond art, sewing, dressmaking, knitting, crochet, embroidery, cosplay crafts, the list goes on. And on. And on. I love learning a new craft. It feeds my soul in a way nothing else does. I may never use that craft again once I’ve learnt how to do it, but I enjoy the process.

I have three books published on Kindle (The Halfling Series can be found here) and writing that trilogy took eight years of my life and so many hours of sobbing at being stuck, strutting around my living room trying to tap dance myself out of a plot corner with style and panache, and disappearing into my own world while I lived vicariously through my characters.

The Halfling Series was finished while I was with my second husband. Who did his best to discourage me from working on it at all because it took too much time away from him and the kids (it didn’t, he just felt like it did). But the joy of writing again after a significant break, the excitement of putting words on the page again, I revelled in it.

Perhaps it was selfish to spend a couple of hours each day working on my book, disappearing into a world I’d shaped and throwing my characters into situations and seeing how they would handle it.

And my characters grew with me. They matured, they struggled, they fought and overcame. They settled into their truest selves as I did. They found the strength to fight for what they loved as I did. They found the courage to stand up and refuse to take abuse as I did.

And I think that terrified my husband.

I think he saw me out growing him, getting confident and creative and happy and it wasn’t anything he could claim responsibility for. I was doing it all myself. And I was asking him to do more. To pick up some slack while I worked on finishing this trilogy so I could start the next project that I’m still convinced I can get a proper agent for. I remember being so excited about that one (and still am, even if I put it aside for now) but I also remember my ex doing his level best to make it about him and how I couldn’t just spend all my time writing instead of being with my family. What he really meant is that I wasn’t spending enough time with him.

Everything quickly became about shaming me for my creativity. My studio wasn’t making enough money, I was spending too much time writing, I never spent time with the kids, I wasn’t doing enough house work because I was either in the studio or writing. Everything was a criticism.

I damn near burnt myself out trying to please him, but it was never enough.

It all came to a head in April, when we finally split.

But he didn’t realise that all my creativity, all that time doing things for me, all that time growing and learning and creating meant he couldn’t destroy who I was anymore. He didn’t have that power over me.

I had the strength to leave because of my creativity. I had the courage to leave because I’d led my characters through worse situations and they had survived. Survived and grown and become stronger for it. So I knew that if they could do it, as an extension of myself, I could do it too. I could fight for a better life for myself.

So I did.

And will keep fighting for myself and my family and my creativity. Because it saved my life.